Low vacuum - should I ditch my vacuum advance distributor?

Thanks all for your support and ideas, appreciate it! So a few takeaways from the above seem to be:
* Regardless I should increase my advance to at least around 34 total and 18-20 initial
* Vaccum advance is good (if it actually works!) The challenge will be to get it to work from around 10hg and at the right time!
* I might look at a dual plane intake instead to see if that helps with vaccum.

This gives me something to start with, will keep you posted! Thanks!